


From the Ashes (Remix of "The Wait")

by Pelydryn



Series: All the ANGST [9]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Angst, Arthur Pendragon Returns, Burning Man, Hopeful Ending, Immortal Merlin, It's all about Arthur though he doesn't show up till the next part, M/M, Pining Merlin (Merlin), Recreational Drug Use, Waiting for Arthur Pendragon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-09 02:59:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14707844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pelydryn/pseuds/Pelydryn
Summary: He stood frozen, distraught, wishing he could lean into the hand and soak up the offered support, lap up any scraps of love. How very alone be was…. A tiny speck in an infinite universe, hoping to one day find purpose, to one day find his lost king.Arthur. Please, I'm so tired. So tired of waiting. Please, come back to me, Arthur.





	From the Ashes (Remix of "The Wait")

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VerdantMoth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/gifts).



> My dear Moth, I requested you as my remixee because I was in awe of your style with all its poetic beauty. I wanted to emulate it (though I couldn't quite manage). My first plan was to remix something dark, but as I got to know you, I suspected you might appreciate something happier instead. 
> 
> You wrote “The Wait,” with Merlin having visions in the Nevada desert, and Arthur was so real in them that it made my heart have warm, gushy FEELINGS. When reading that story, I wondered how it was that Merlin came to be running around naked in the desert in the first place. 
> 
> I'd heard of Burning Man, also in Nevada, and started doing research. What I learned blew me away. (I recommend searching Google Images for “Burning Man” followed by words such as _temple, art car, mutant vehicle, theme camp, the man, costumes, burns, dust_ , etc. The photos are unbelievable.) I became so engrossed I felt like I'd actually attended the event. (Need to know how to get your RV septic tank serviced in Black Rock City? I'm your girl.) Hopefully the feeling of being a part of that crazy world comes through in the story. 
> 
> Keep writing and developing your style, Moth. It's gorgeous!
> 
> Also thank you to my beta and cheerleader D, without whom I'd be a nervous wreck. (Okay, fine, I'm always a bit of a nervous wreck, but you make it So Much Better!) <3 Thank you also to R for all the constant cheerleading. You help me so much!

Merlin returned to Burning Man—that giant “party in the desert”—every year. He had originally been drawn to the burning of the giant wooden Man. It reminded him of ancient solstice rituals: effigies set on fire in great bonfires, villagers feasting and dancing all night and carrying out certain… ahem… fertility rituals in the fields. But he came back each year for the rest of the experience: all the people chasing their bliss, revelling in creativity and self-expression, art and companionship tucked around every corner. Eighty thousand people working together to create a new world, albeit a temporary one that would only last a week. 

He never bothered with a ticket. It had to be ordered over the internet as soon as sales opened; they sold out quickly. With so many people there, what was one more? No one would notice. He would teleport to the playa in broad daylight; anyone who saw him would consider it just another in the long line of spectacles they had seen. Or they'd blame it on the drugs. 

Drugs were illegal of course, but that didn't stop anyone. 

Merlin liked to keep a clear head for the rest of the year, but there was something about this bacchanalia in the dust that insisted that he let go. Let go of his past, let go of his endless searching, let go of the sadness. Let go of rules and roles and just let himself drift along with the mass of humanity, pretending just for this week that he was one of them. 

For their part, the citizens of Black Rock City did their best to pretend they belonged to Merlin's world. Well, not _his_ world, specifically, but a world where the mundane was banished in favour of fantasy: monsters and aliens, goddesses and demons and kings. A world where magic frolicked around every corner. 

Just for this week, Merlin allowed himself to let go of his past and stop looking for one _specific_ dead king. Not that he could ever truly escape from that obsession. But he needed to break away, let himself just _be_ , leave all of everything outside the bright orange, pentagonal, garbage-collecting, people-corralling fence. 

He never brought supplies. The event had principles for its attendees to follow, one of which was radical self-reliance. Everyone was expected to bring all that was needed in order to survive in such a harsh environment. But other Burning Man principles included community cooperation and gifting, and truthfully, Merlin had had enough of radical self-reliance. He'd been self-reliant since he had left Ealdor, a time so far gone that its memory was as hazy as the Man in a dust storm. Gifts of food (and jewellery and alcohol and drugs and sex) were plentiful, and strangers always opened their tents to him. His magic protected from sunburn as well as any sunblock could and provided protection from the omnipresent alkaline dust. He didn't technically need goggles and breathing masks when the wind whipped the dust through the playa, but people always gave him some anyway. He would wear them along with everyone else so as not to draw attention to himself and then pass the gift along to another. 

This year he arrived on the deep playa, out in the desert far beyond the Temple. Even here one could find unexpected wonders: art installations, fascinating people, mutant vehicles that had gone for a drive. The breeze was up, spurred on by the heat of the afternoon, and visibility was poor. He could see a large hulking shadow off to his right, and headed towards it. 

A woman in a sapphire blue ball gown riding a bicycle appeared out of the haze. He watched as she pedalled by and was quickly swallowed by the dust. 

He began his trek through the playa towards what he assumed was the Temple. The playa was an ancient lake that had dried up and left behind an alkaline flat. Nothing could grow on such land, leaving a level and barren wasteland. The earth underfoot was nearly white. It had been baked solid by intense sunlight and cracked in a hexagonal pattern. Ultra-fine dust covered everything. The breeze was hot and dry and lashed stinging particles against his skin.

He passed by a couple of nude men playing a game of chess on a giant board (each square was large enough for a person to stand on). They called to him and offered beer from their ice chest. Merlin accepted and finished it off quickly. Nothing helped the process of letting go quite as much as some strategic use of alcohol. 

One of the men, who had greying hair, weather-worn skin, and a welcoming smile, asked what Merlin thought of camp this year. He grinned and said, “Don't know. Just teleported in.”

The other man, young and strong with tattoos of mythical creatures parading up his arms and down his chest, wrinkled his nose and asked, “Oh, you one of ‘em rich boys as flies in with their own set a wings? Gotta golden toilet seat waitin’ for ya in camp, do ya?”

Merlin sighed. For an event where one of the ten principles was radical inclusion, participants could sure be unwelcoming to those they didn't approve of. One year some of the old-timers tried to move the event to a hidden location so that “fat frat boys” couldn't ruin it. All that worry, and no fat frat boys had ever even showed up. 

“For your information, I did _not_ arrive at the Black Rock airport.” There actually was a temporary airfield that served the event, consisting of two mile-long runways marked into the dried lakebed. The rich and connected, the “one percenters”, could avoid the interminable wait to get into Black Rock City. Sometimes cars spent twelve hours waiting for entry as thousands of vehicles ahead were searched for contraband—scary things like feathers and plants and wood chips. Anything that might make a mess was as frowned upon as illegal items or stowaways.

Merlin continued, “I actually arrived like _this_.” With a dramatic (and completely unnecessary) hand clap over his head, he teleported away from the giant chess board and towards the Temple. He didn't want to go too far away, lest he miss anything. Let those two think what they would. They would probably consider Merlin's disappearing act just another marvel of Black Rock City. If they did spread the story, any listener would assume they were high on drugs. 

Merlin reappeared next to a giant metal octopus rolling slowly into the deep playa. Occasionally flames would shoot out its tentacles, met with wild cheering from crowds flocking after. A yellow duck larger than a bus followed nearby, pumping out techno music. A large mass of people danced on top of the duck’s back. It was quite the sight, watching the mobile dance party “chase” after the flaming octopus, neither going faster than the five miles per hour speed limit, as set by the Department of Mutant Vehicles. 

Later in the week, Merlin would hitch a ride on a couple of the art cars. Besides official vehicles, they were the only motorized transport allowed. Riding along with one was quite the experience. 

Shadows stretched long across the sand by the time Merlin reached the Temple. The giant wooden construction had been lit for the night, and just like every year, it was stunning. This Temple was in the shape of a spiralling galaxy, geometric designs spinning up into a point that reached towards the heavens. It was immense, and as Merlin approached he felt tiny, insignificant. After centuries of feeling like too much depended on him, that he was the last true power on Earth, it was nice to pretend to be naught more than a desert bug, a beetle scuttling along in the sand under the shadow of things larger, grander, and more important. 

The Temple was a landmark. A straight line led from the Temple to the Man, who stood at the center of an open circle like the midpoint of a clock. The city was laid out evenly in a semi-circle around the Man.

Merlin meant to pass it by, to come back later in the week. It was a place of such solemnity, such sadness, though always tinged with the spirit of joy. It hinted that despite the pain, despite how fragile and ephemeral the human body is, there was release in death, maybe even a life beyond. 

Thousands of people visited the temple before it burned on the last day of the event. They left notes to their dead loved ones, prayers whispered to the bare timber that would soon float up to the heavens as ashes borne on hot desert winds, or swirl off into the wilderness carried on the turbulent arms of a whirlwind, called dust devils by the unknowing but revered as ancestors by the original inhabitants of this barren land. 

The Temple would be filled with people, mourning, crying, murmuring to each other through the pangs of their hearts. Merlin usually went in the very early morning, when most people were sleeping off a night of drunken revelry. The fewer people present, the better. The sorrow of centuries weighed upon him there; in his agony, more than tears came out. Sobs, laughter, screaming—and sometimes scratching at the hard desert rock until his fingernails bled. Better that than ransacking the shrine, the memorial to countless lost souls. The pain was immense, and it had to escape somehow. 

So no, Merlin really didn't want to visit the Temple now. But—it called to him. The timbers spiralled upwards, almost like an upside-down whirlpool, sucking anyone who dared pass by into its vortex, pulling them in and up, in and up, up up up to the heavens. Lifting the spirit and helping it soar. 

Merlin couldn't stay away. He was drawn into the space between two of the spiralling arms and followed them in, in, in, to the interior of the temple. At the very centre he could look up and see a complex mandala building up to a large space open to the sky. At this, the Temple's heart, he could feel his grief being sucked past his defenses, pulled gently but relentlessly from the iron cage Merlin kept around his sorrow. His protective walls flowed away as if suddenly turned to water. They spilled into his blood and the grief surged within, rushing up and out, out his eyes, out his mouth, out his fingers, out his heart. 

He was lost in time, caught in the spiralling vortex of grief and despair, heedless of the humanity around him, people that came and went like the surge of the tides, leaving him there alone, a rock breaking, a soul broken. 

The palm of a hand was laid gently on his cheek. It was dry and warm and rough from work, thin skin drooping from spindly bones. Like Gaius’ hand had been. He had a clear memory of Gaius pressing his hand to Merlin's face so very many years ago, and the tears spilled again. He couldn't shirk away from the hand, but nor could he open his eyes. He stood frozen, distraught, wishing he could lean into the hand and soak up the offered support, lap up any scraps of love. How very alone be was…. Waiting alone, a tiny speck in an infinite universe, hoping to one day find purpose, and to one day find his lost king. 

_Arthur. Please, I'm so tired. So tired of waiting. Please, come back to me, Arthur._

“Emrys,” a raspy voice whispered. 

Merlin managed to push aside his grief and open his eyes, despite the tears still oozing out. 

An old woman stood there, dark wrinkled skin stretched tight across her face. Her hair was white and pulled back into a knot, but stray pieces had been blown out of place by the wind, forming a messy halo. The most noticeable thing, even more striking than the brightly coloured clothes she wore, were her eyes. They were sharp and bright. She reminded Merlin of a falcon gliding on the wind, poised motionless in the sky without needing to flap her wings, surveying the world below, noticing everything that moved. 

Merlin must be her prey, but the woman's face was so warm that he didn't mind in the slightest. He inhaled deeply, trying to chase away the last shuddering breaths and wayward tears. 

“I have a gift. If you will come.”

This is why he had been called to the Temple… Somehow he knew. He would let go of his past, leave behind his grief, and follow this woman. He had no other plans anyway. Perhaps she would have a place for him to sleep, though he didn't mind bumming a spot in one of the larger theme camps. There was always a corner to curl up in, always food and drink offered freely. 

Merlin would, in turn, leave behind gifts of his own. He would offer blessings, and to those who accepted, he would whisper healing spells. Proper consent was everything here, whether it be for sex or photography or a healing touch. So Merlin always asked. He never called it “magic”, only a blessing. But once word spread about how effective his blessings were, people would seek him out. Many believers in the old ways came to Burning Man; they sought more from the world, evidence of the existence of things invisible, things unexplainable. They searched for proof of a world beyond this sorrowful valley of thorns, lives spent cowering under the shadow of death. 

Merlin nodded at the woman, words unnecessary. She turned and followed one of the spiral arms of the Temple back to the open playa. It was full night now, and the desert had transformed into an entirely new world. Coloured lights were everywhere: on the art cars, on bicycles, wrapped around people. There were incredible light shows coming from multiple directions where dance parties were raging, bass blasting into the dry desert air. Black Rock City was laid out like two-thirds of a clock, and the loudest camps were relegated to the edges. But still the music penetrated into every nook and cranny, every crack and crevice. If Merlin didn't have magic to silence the ambient noise, he'd need earplugs and answered prayers if he ever hoped to sleep in this place. 

A straight line from the Temple towards the camp led to the Man. The Man was giant, built with the same timber and waxed burlap that the Temple was. He always had some sort of home. This year he was standing on top of a giant UFO. The whole thing was lit in vibrant neon colours. Merlin's jaw dropped when he saw it. It was spectacular, beyond belief, and for a moment Merlin wondered if perhaps he weren't the only magic user in the world. But no, this just showed the amazing things that the human spirit could accomplish when motivated. The urge to create was an especially strong impulse. Humans loved to create order from chaos, meaning from nothingness, love in the face of hatred. 

Despite his determination to let go, he recalled his own failed attempts at creation. How he and Arthur had been prophesied— _destined_ —to create a golden age in a united Albion. But he had failed. He had failed and his hope and love had died along with his king. 

On Saturday night the Man would burn, a wild bonfire with fireworks and explosions. The crowd would celebrate in a drunken carousel, as if watching the destruction of creation was a good thing. Merlin knew he was deliberately missing the point, which was that life was followed by death, creation by destruction… but had either of those ever worked in his favour? His dreams had been destroyed, but his body kept on living. Where was death for him, the death symbolised by the burning of the Man? When would Merlin find peace, find an escape from the guilt and pain and regret?

Merlin always tried to see the Man as just a fancy bundle of sticks, only a symbol, but at the moment he couldn't help recalling all the times he had witnessed someone burnt to death on a pyre. 

He shuddered and looked away. 

The woman proceeded past the crowds that tended to gather around the Man at all hours of the day or night and made for Black Rock City proper. The Man was located in a large open space in the middle of the circle, and the streets arched around it. The innermost street, the entirety of which was visible as it curved around the Man, was called the Esplanade. It was home to Center Camp (where you could buy coffee, despite the rules against all forms of commercial activity—it always reminded Merlin of the times Arthur used magic, even as his official laws condemned it) and many of the most well-established theme camps. The camps were beyond crazy:ball pits, crazy swirling light-up swings, sex Olympics, nature museums, dance parties, fire pits, medics, bike repair shops (where volunteers routinely did $100 repairs on $80 bikes), psychedelic bars serving free alcohol all day and night, videos and stage shows and art installations.It just boggled the mind to think how all this could be set up so quickly in the middle of nowhere. For one week, Black Rock City was the third largest town in Nevada. Its creation was a magic unlike any Merlin had seen before. 

Merlin followed the woman around the raves and the masses of people in crazy costumes lit up with everything from glow sticks to fairy lights. They went by a thirty-foot tall, tutu-wearing Godzilla standing next to an even taller Empire State Building. They skirted around a Celtic castle dance club the size of a house. Lights and music spilled out of it into the quickly cooling night air, and for just a moment, Merlin wished he could plunge in with the crowds and dance the night away, forget everything but the pulse of the music and the warmth of whatever partner he might find. 

But his magic trilled at him to follow the woman, to leave everything else behind. 

It took ages before they reached their destination. They passed through all the rings of streets, manoeuvering their way through the bicycles and foot traffic, avoiding the occasional illuminated art car or mutant vehicle. The farther from the Esplanade they went, the darker it got. The tents and temporary buildings were still wild, but the frequency of more normal-looking campsites increased. Soon they were wandering past a brigade of RVs and mundane tents that grew sparser. Merlin wondered if they were going to keep walking forever, out into the desert, never to return. 

He wouldn't mind. 

They had reached the outer end of the walk-in section, right at the very edge of the city, when his guide stopped at a large camp. Walls had been constructed from canvas and wood, and inside there was an enclosed area the size of a classroom. It was lit by several lanterns hanging from the elevated ceiling. Over the tarp-covered floor, scraps of carpet had been laid out, and all around there was an abundance of pillows and blankets for resting on. Smoke hung thick in the air. There were people in various states of undress lounging around, sleeping or smoking or cuddling—or shagging. 

Someone brought him a pipe, and Merlin puffed gratefully. “You stay here tonight. Tomorrow we will find what you are looking for,” the woman said, gently pushing him off in the direction of a rather comfy-looking nest of cushions, and he was eager to go. It had been a long, emotional day, and he just needed some place quiet to try to scour away any residual sadness from his time in the Temple. 

As he lay in the little nest, pretty comfy except for the dust rubbing against his skin (it had infiltrated through his clothes and covered every bit of him) and the playa bogeys clogging his nose, he looked up and noticed an abundance of crystals hanging from the ceiling amidst the lanterns. The light glinted from their faces, and as the breeze outside gently shook the tent, the crystals flashed and glittered in a multitude of colours. 

Merlin could sense that most were devoid of power and that several were actually made of plastic. But there were a couple that vibrated with true mystical energy. 

The one closest to him, hanging right over his nest, sang out with the same magical resonance as the Crystal of Neahtid once had. Except—this crystal sang of joy, of hope fulfilled and love requited, of happiness and reunions and peace. 

And somehow he knew: tomorrow he would find what he was looking for. Merlin smiled in delight and let the music of the crystal lull him to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Make sure you go read moth's fic to find out what happens! It's short and sweet and you can find it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14289411
> 
> And here is the Temple design for 2018, which I tried to describe in this story: 
> 
> https://journal.burningman.org/2017/12/burning-man-arts/brc-art/galaxia-the-2018-temple/
> 
>  


End file.
